Fred Aiken Writing

While coming of age, a friend’s brother’s close, but not best, friend told me the best high he ever experienced was while smoking the mold from an orange that had been sitting under his bed for seven weeks.

Seven weeks exactly, he said. No more, no less. It’s important to be exact. Timing is everything when it comes to crafting your high. Otherwise you might end up on a bad trip with no return ticket.

I must admit, though, that I was a bit skeptical of his claim.

You don’t believe me? He guffaws. A hearty, adolescent chuckle made from the same atoms and microbial material as the very first stars that formed all those years ago. I’ll prove it to you.

He pulls out a blue and green psychedelic glass pipe that has seen some better days, or maybe worse depending on perspective. He confidently holds the pipe up as if it were a prized possession he never wanted to lose, as if it were his parents’ approval he never received, as if it were a report card without a single failing mark, as if it were a magical gauntlet that would grant him all the wishes he wanted. He takes out a ziploc bag containing what can only be described as a plethora of rotten orange rinds with wild hues of orange, blue, and green, with specks of white highlighting the microbial civilization that took root on the smooth, citric terrain. He places a single piece of the rind on his pipe and produces a lighter that he then proceeds to light the orange on fire.

I briefly contemplate whether or not there’s a smoked orange juice in the grocery stores, and further wonder if there is such a product whether or not it would taste better with or without the pulp.

He takes as large of an inhale as his young, adolescent diaphragm will let him. Then he holds his breath. A moment too long passes. His face turns a cornucopia of colors. A deep red and purple form around his cheek and eyes. Just as we think he’s about to pass out, an exasperated pillow of pungent smoke shoots out of his mouth.

My teacher, Ms. Fadumo, warned us about contact high before summer break. She said something along the lines that even if you didn’t directly take any drugs that sometimes it didn’t matter, sometimes all you had to do was stand near someone taking those drugs; sometimes it was the people you hang around; sometimes it’s the thoughts you have; sometimes it’s the people you call family, friends, acquaintances, everyone; sometimes it was inescapable, and to be high was inevitable. I’m not entirely sure what all she meant, but at that moment, standing there, watching a fellow pubescent stranger engorge on the hallucinogens of a rotting orange made me wonder for a brief moment whether or not I would become high just by watching him.

I don’t think anyone can say with any certainty that he ends up intoxicated. He stumbles around the parking lot in somewhat of a dramatization of a teenager on drugs. He looks like what an afterschool special television producer on his third divorce would interpret as kids getting high. He almost bows after his performance.

Someone pipes up and asks him what it feels like. He chuckles a gapped-tooth grin and mouths something unintelligible. 

Wanna hit? he asks no one in particular.

I don’t know how often he ended up smoking rotted orange rinds that sat under his bed for weeks on end. I assumed no studies have been conducted to study the brain of someone that smokes rotted fruit as a drug. Seems like it would be a small niche. Seems like no one would care.

Either way, I didn’t end up keeping up with my friend’s brother’s friend.  I probably saw him only a handful other times before we all inevitably drifted apart and barely kept up with one another through facebook. 

I do, recall, however, finding out that the orange smoking teenager became an occupational therapist that owns a ranch-style home in Bekepskee, IN with a 4.23% interest a few days ago while at the funeral of my friend’s brother who died of a sudden and seemingly inexplicable cardiac arrest at the age of 43 while driving a forklift. A group of former childhood friends sat around waxing about memorable and odd memories we had about the deceased and people that we remembered and sometimes didn’t want to remember brought up this memory, and I’m unsure where to place it in the annals of formative recollection. 

I guess I certainly wouldn’t say it didn’t leave an impression. Maybe it’s got me thinking that I didn’t have enough fun in high school and college because I was afraid of becoming like the rotted-orange-smoking friend who parodied drugs and ingrained within me the concept of going too far.